Month: December 2011

Matt O’Brien and Darius Tahir give reasons why Gingrich might not implode:

The Iowa caucuses are five weeks away. That’s probably not enough time for a new anti-Romney to emerge. And even if it were, who might it be? Ron Paul? Too extreme, even for the Republicans. Jon Huntsman? Romney without the organization and cash. Rick Santorum? Actually, I’ve always wondered why he couldn’t generate any buzz. But he’s had his chance to generate support – and he obviously can’t do it. So for Republicans who want anybody but Romney, Gingrich would seem to be the only option left.

Huntsman is nothing like Romney, and has plenty of cash. He's just engaged with reality, which disqualifies him from what is essentially a talk radio version of American Idol. Pete Spiliakos, on the other hand, expects Gingrich to get destroyed by the other candidates in the upcoming debates:

The next two debates pose several kinds of risks for Gingrich.  The first is that the other candidates will publicize his record as a pro-federal health insurance mandate, pro-amnesty, pro-cap-and-trade, paid shill for Freddie Mac, crony capitalist, flip-flop artist. 

That is bad (and very bad because true) enough, but it gets worse.  There is a substantial fraction of Gingrich supporters who know most of this and look past it because they think the Republicans need a Gingrich-type as nominee to defeat Obama in the general election.  They don’t like him because they think he is a good guy.  They support him because they think he is rough and tough, and wicked smart, and an invincible debater.  If Gingrich gets bruised by all the attacks that will come in the next couple of debates, he won’t just look like a pro-federal health insurance mandate, pro-amnesty, pro-cap-and-trade, paid shill for Freddie Mac, crony capitalist, flip-flop artist.  He will also look like an overrated, washed up loser. 

A reader quotes another:

"I think I speak for the great majority of straight men when I say that the sight of a penis that is not my own fills me with revulsion. " I find that hard to believe, considering how many penises straight men see in straight porn.

Another writes:

If your reader finds other penises so revolting, how does he cope with Greco-Roman statuary or Renaissance art? I think his casually homophobic remarks about supposedly gay naked men making "them straights" uncomfortable speaks to a larger neurosis that, in the developed world, is peculiar to America. Topless beaches are the norm in certain regions of Europe and, to the best of my knowledge, female visitors don't constantly fear lecherous stares.

Another:

A reader says of the current LOFO norm: "It's not homophobia or neurosis; it's a natural reaction to the idea that you may be the subject of one-sided sexual gratification." Welcome to a woman's world.

Some straight men have a complete and utter willingness to fulfill their one-sided sexual gratification in leering at us. I hope the awareness that comes from being on the receiving end will make them be a bit more subtle about showing their natural desires.

Another elaborates on that point:

First of all, lesbians exist. Why would this dynamic be any different for straight women getting naked in the locker room? And yet, I suspect that women don't bother too much about the fact that a nearby lesbian may be getting some "one-sided sexual gratification" from their nudity.

Which brings me to my second point: straight men exist. I suspect that both of these straight guys who are oh-so-terrified of old-man dick and lurking homos have happily derived a little unreciprocated pleasure from the female form (clothed or nude) without giving it a second thought, let alone the agonized soul searching you excerpted. I'd be curious to know how they justify denying others the same visual liberties they take every day.

I think this story is ultimately about straight guys being uncomfortable with the awareness of themselves as sexual object rather than sexual subject. But their wives, girlfriends, and female coworkers deal with that issue constantly and handle it with admirable stoicism. (Whether they should have to is another story.)

Man up, guys: some dudes are going to be into you, but that doesn't make you gay. It's not catching!

Another:

I'm rather curious whether your female readers report any generational locker room differences. As someone who was a fat kid and always afraid of the locker room, I think the main difference is that older men grew up being judged less harshly on their appearance and consequently have less sense of bodily shame or a need to compare themselves to others. I know that in high school (thanks to our hard-hitting school newspaper), the boys' stalls didn't have doors, and the girls' did. I bet old women have some modesty in the gym, since women have for generations been judged by their appearance. And as men have increasingly faced unrealistic standards of six-pack abs on television and film, not to mention unnaturally smoothe and shiny torsos, I bet they've started to keep it covered, especially when they think they don't quite measure up.

A rave review from Charles Moore, the ur-Tory of his generation and the authorized biographer of the Iron Lady. Money quote:

As someone who pays extremely close attention to the subject – I have been writing Lady Thatcher’s authorised biography for the past seven years – I notice that Ms Streep captures virtually every mannerism and trick of speech: a slight movement of the lower lip after speaking, the smile that can suddenly frost over, the mixture of very genuine courtesy to people in general and shattering rudeness to senior colleagues (never to junior ones), and the way the voice changed after coaching, in the Seventies, to make it deeper.

The only thing she gets wrong is the walk. In real life, in her prime, Mrs Thatcher moved in what Alan Hollinghurst, in his novel of the Thatcher era, The Line of Beauty, calls a “dignified scuttle”, as she hastened from one meeting to the next clutching sheaves of paper and the famous handbag. Streep, who is taller than her subject, wears lower heels, and walks more erect, swinging her hips.

The trailer has gotten me quite worked up.

New research indicates that "racial animus" cost Obama three to five points in the popular vote:

[Seth] Stephens-Davidowitz limits his data to an area’s total [Google] searches from 2004 to 2007 that include the word "nigger" or "niggers" (terms used to constrain the amount of data). His analysis includes data from nearly 200 media markets, including over 99 percent of voters. The results are dramatic. "A one standard deviation increase in an area’s racially charged search is associated with a 1.5 percentage point decrease in Barack Obama’s vote share, controlling for John Kerry’s vote share," writes Stephens-Davidowitz. … Put another way, Obama would have won between 56.7 and 58.7 percent of the vote if the country were as tolerant as its most tolerant area.

John Sides rounds up more research on the subject.

I'll liveblog the Huckabee FNC debate tomorrow night. Romney and Gingrich will be there.

Chait imagines what will happen to it should Newt win the nomination:

It will utterly confirm every self-regarding instinct he has – which is to say, every instinct he has. No level of external criticism could be total enough, no debacle complete enough, for Gingrich not to think to himself, "They all mocked me during the primary race but I alone knew I would prevail." He could win the nomination and be trailing by 40 points, or win the presidency and attempt to launch a $100 trillion program to relocate the entire world population to Mars, and at no point would any external criticism make him even slightly inclined to alter his plan.

A classic exchange on the latest claim of a long affair with a woman Cain admits he gave money to and talked to on the phone in the early hours of the morning:

HANNITY: Herman, isn't this something, though, that would be easily confirmed? She is saying that you flew her around the country. She's saying that you were meeting in hotels. Can't we get plane tickets, confirmations? Can't we get hotels? Don't a lot of these hotels have videotapes that they — some of them, I would assume, hang on to those tapes forever. And —

CAIN: Sean, do me a favor. Let's not play detective. Here's the deal. I am going to prove that — I am going to re-establish my character. OK? We're working on that. My attorney is working on that. We're going to work on that. But I don't want to play detective right now, with all due respect. OK?

"Let's not play detective." He's done. But he's still nationally at 14 percent. Where will those voters go? In Iowa and Florida and New Hampshire, they have created the Newt surge. Maybe some of the rest will go to Paul. I agree with Avlon: things are very rocky in Romneyland.

The tumblr description:

These are text messages I exchange with my 17-year-old cousin Bennett. He's a white boy who thinks he's a crip, works at Amoco, has a girlfriend named Mercedes, and is one of the most unintentionally and brilliant souls on the planet.

Update: The Smoking Gun debunks the story as fiction. Regardless, Dish fave:

Newt's favorite word. There's a reason a fundamentalist movement likes him.